Jim Dine Paris Reconnaissance

“Straw Heart” Jim Dine

Paris’ Centre Pompidou hosts a sampling of work by American artist Jim Dine (until April 23). The title of the exhibition —translated as Paris recognition or gratitude— reflects the artist’s love for the city he has been visiting since the sixties. He maintains an art studio in Montrouge. The exhibition consists of 28 works that make up a recent donation by the artist to Paris Musée National d’Art Moderne. A gift he says to repay his “personal and cultural debt” to France. Over the past years Dine has also donated selections of his art to museums across Europe and the US, including the British Museum, the Albertina in Vienna, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The mini retrospective at the Centre Pompidou features a representative selection of Dine’s work from 1961 to the present including his iconic “Five Ways of Looking at Nancy and I at Ithaca (Straw Heart). Dine is also a poet. The exhibition includes several large wall-size poems inspired by Paris written by Dine “La Couple,” Juillet,” “Café Varenne”… Speaking about Paris, Dine said: “So, I am giving this gift of 28 pieces with memories, the memories of a France and a Paris that nourished me, a man from European grandparents. Polish, Lithuanian grandparents who knew nothing about France except from books. French painting from books as a teenager. When I got here it all became alive and grabbed me by the back of the neck and touched my heart,”